Infants are born highly sensitive to the natural patterns found in languages. They use their perceptual sensitivity to acquire detailed information about the structure of languages in their environment. To date, most studies of infant perception and early language acquisition have investigated spoken/auditory languages and hearing infants (e.g.…

During infant development, objects and their functions are learned by means of active exploration. Factors that may influence exploration include reaching and grasping ability, object properties and the presence of developmental disorders. We assessed the development of exploratory actions in 16 typically-developing (TD) infants and 9 infants with…

The term "representational momentum" (RM) refers to the idea that our memory representations for moving objects incorporate information about movement--a fact that can lead us to make errors when judging an object's location (the RM effect). In this study, we explored the RM effect in a sample of children born very prematurely and a sample born at…

Children with mental retardation have pronounced difficulties in using cognitive strategies and comprehending abstract concepts--among them, the concept of sequential time (Van-Handel, Swaab, De-Vries, & Jongmans, 2007). The perception of sequential time is generally tested by using scenarios presenting a continuum of actions. The goal of this…

Three experiments investigated whether 4-month-olds would attend to and utilize the global configuration ("good form") of a partly occluded, moving object to perceive its unit and coherence behind the occluder. Results indicated that curvature per se provided information in support of completion, in addition to global configuration and…

Three experiments examined development of perceptual causality in 3- to 9-year-olds. Findings indicated that participants of all ages assigned contact events (A moves toward B, which moves upon contact) to the physical domain and non-contact events (B moves before contact) to the psychological domain. Participants chose causality more often for…

Tested in two studies 4- to 7-year-olds' face recognition by manipulating the faces' configural and featural information. Found that even with only a single 5-second exposure, most children could use configural and featural cues to make identity judgments. Repeated exposure and feedback improved others' performance. Even proficient memories were…

This report presents results from an experimental comparison of four kinds of Head Start programs (Montessori, Traditional, Bereiter-Engelmann, and Darcee) and a 3-year follow-up through second grade. The four programs are described, and the immediate and stable effects of each program on children's cognitive, motivational and perceptual…

Five experiments used a categorization habituation-of-looking paradigm to investigate infants' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static versus dynamic attributes of stimuli (color images versus dynamic point-light displays). Findings showed that 6-month-olds categorize animals and vehicles based on static and dynamic information, and…

Two studies assessed the gaze following of 12-, 14-, and 18-month-olds. Findings indicated that infants at all ages looked at the adult's target more when the adult turned to the target with open eyes than when the adult turned with closed eyes. Additional evidence suggested that infants were not simply responding to adult head turning, but were…

Presented five- and eight-month olds with silent moving and static video images of self, peer, and doll, and sounds of self and nonsocial objects. Found that recognition of one's image develops through experience with dynamic facial stimulation during first eight months. By five months, infants treat their faces and voices as familiar and social…

Behavioural and emotional problems occur more frequently in children with learning problems than in a cross-section of the general population, both at home and at school. While behaviour problems reportedly are a key obstructive factor impeding inclusive education, children with both behavioural and learning disabilities carry a high risk of…

Two experiments examined developmental changes in reasoning about intensive quantities--predicting mixture intensity of pairs of liquids with different intensities of red color. Results showed that cognitive averaging in this domain developed late and slowly. Predominating up to 12 years was an extensivity bias, a strong tendency to use rules that…

Recent research using theory-of-mind tasks has rekindled interest in the possibility that social interaction makes a significant contribution to cognitive development. It is proposed here that this contribution may be most pronounced with phenomena that, like belief or affective states, are internal and abstract. A more modest contribution is…

This research investigated temporal ordering acuity in children, or the ability to perceive the first of an ordered pair of lights, or of a combined light and tone, when the interstimulus time interval within each pair became increasingly short in duration. Two group-related comparisons were made: (1) differences between slow-maturing and average…